Watercolor Wonders: Making Textures & Transforming Your Art

1. Introduction: The Let's dive into the exciting world of watercolors and textures. If you're a fan of those two topics as I am, then join me and I will be very happy to have you here. This class is huge because it will be super long, but I'm sure we will learn a lot. So let's get started. My name is Anya. I'm an illustrator. I illustrate books, magazines, and I teach art here on Skillshare. I thought about making this class for a long time right now because I often get asked. How do you make those textures? How do you create those effects? I am happy to create a block of classes about textures, and let's start with watercolors. In this class, we will explore different kind of textures like sky textures, greenery textures like trees or grass. We will explore also different watercolors, traditional ones, liquid watercolors, and we will add also some mixed media to watercolors, and we will see what different effects we can make. I'm sure this class will be super helpful because you can just only by painting textures, develop your watercolor skills, you will be more comfortable. With this medium, and you can just play around and paint on the textures, but you can also try to apply them into illustrations. I will show you many examples of how I used textures in my own art. So you will be free to explore this class in whatever direction you want. But I will explain it better in the next lesson. This class is for everybody, both for beginners and advanced artists, you will probably notice that this class is based on the classes that are already here on Skillshare. I took some of the lessons where I show different techniques of how to make textures, and I put them in one place. So even if you took some of the classes already that I mentioned here, don't worry because there are lots of them. And I'm sure you will find something new for you, but also you can watch the lessons and see, again, how to create textures because I won't repeat the steps or the techniques from other classes, but I will specifically focus on creating textures. So it could be useful as well for you to repeat some of the steps, or you can just search for another content that will be new for you. And in the next lesson, I will show you how you can explore this class and what is the class project? I cannot wait to start this adventure with you. Let's dime in. 2. Class Project: I'm aware that this class is huge. There will be a lot of lessons, a lot of content. So I want you to feel free to explore this class in whatever direction you want. You can just explore textures on their own and paint just simple textures, or you can apply them into your own art and illustrations. I will show you different examples of my art and illustrations and the ways I applied them. So feel free to do it as well. But if you feel more comfortable just to play around and has different textures, then do that, you can all of the textures are just one of them, you can paint just one type of illustration or paint many different illustrations. Feel free to do whatever you want and feel free to explore this class in whatever way you want. So, for example, you can make just sky textures, or you can paint an illustration with the sky texture. Or you can paint all the types of textures and all the type of illustrations. It's really up to you, your instinct, and also because this class is long, then feel free to come back to it. When you feel like it, you can applaud just one project. And for example, in the future, you can make other projects, other textures and update your project. It's really up to you. So I hope this is clear for you and I hope that you will enjoy, and I'm sure that you will discover new things for you and that you will have a lot of fun. Let's get started. 3. Materials: Let's see what art materials you will need for this class. So I'm aware that this class is super big, super long, and there will be many techniques involved, many different fun things to do with many materials, but you don't have to have it all. So at the beginning, I will show you just the basic stuff that you will need for sure, and the rest is something extra. So don't worry. Let's see the basic stuff. So obviously, watercolors. There are many different types. You know about it. The kind of watercolors is really up to you. You can work with a really basic, small set of watercolors. It will be enough. You don't have to have lots of colors. For example, even if you have something small like this, even if it's consumed, but if you have small set of this kind, it will be perfectly enough. You can test many different colors if you're a color freak as iron and you have dozens or hundreds, even of different colors, then obviously, feel free to experiment and test as many colors as you want. As for the paper. Oh, sorry, let's take out of the major zone also water. Obviously, you need water. As for the paper, most of the exercises or most of the textures you can do also with your sketchbook. For example, I used to do the liquid watercolor textures. If you have a good quality sketchbook and you're fine with it, then you can use it for your textures as well. Sometimes we will load our paper with a lot of water. So in this case, I would recommend watercolor paper. Doesn't have to be super quality. Sometimes it is better, especially if you want your paper to remain wet for a long time. So in this case, try to use something better, but don't feel forced to use very expensive and push paper. For example, this one is a good example of good quality, not so expensive paper honeymle. There are different types. This one is hot press, and important is it should have 300 grams, and also it should have cotton within it. Doesn't have to be 100% cotton. For example, lately, I use this one and this one is 100% cellulose, and it works also fine. Just see what you have at home, see what works best for you. If you want just to experiment and play, then obviously use something cheaper. And if you would like to do some illustration that you would like to hang on a wall, then go for cotton paper. And also, if you use cellulose paper and see that, the effect is not so good, so maybe test some other paper, sometimes quality makes difference. Okay, so for the basic stuff, also, obviously, brushes, prepare a set of three or four different sizes of brushes, watercolor brushes. Basically, we will use round brushes. This one is good for applying water in a quick way as a background when we will work with wet on wet technique, then some bigger and medium brush and have also one or two brushes for thin lines because we will do some thin strokes as well. But if you don't have this kind of brush, then also brush with a good tip will be enough, and you can make fine lines also with the very tip of your brush. So only if you have small brush, then, then it's great. If not, then you use just the very tip of your brush. So good things for our texture. Something that you probably have at home is paper towel. You can use tissue. We will use it quite often. So be sure to prepare it. Also, I suppose that you will have salt at home. This is regular kitchen salt. This fine one. Um, is the one that we will use for some of the lessons. I would recommend you to take water that you will spray. It could be in different bottles or different ways that you can spray the water on your watercolor. I have this one. I have also the spray in pen. I don't have it right now, but smaller one. Maybe you can use the one that you use for ironing, or you could just sprinkle water also with a toothbrush. I think that's more or less the things that are, let's say, necessary. Now, I will show you the supplies that will be protagonists of media techniques or liquid watercolor techniques because there will be several lessons with textures made with those watercolors. Those are liquid watercolors. So if you have them at home, then I really recommend you to see those lessons because they're really fun. I'll show you different fun ways that are not so obvious or on how to work with liquid watercolors. They are a great medium with very vibrant colors. They are kind of ink, let's say, they have very intense colors, and they're very translucent. You can make really lovely transparencies. There are different types and kinds. This one is cheaper version. I think they're cheaper than doctor Peach Martins. They work more or less in the same way. Those one are more intense, more concentrated. But I also explain what kind of medium it is in the separate class. So you can have a look where I specifically explain the differences and how they work. And for your exploration with textures, only two colors will be enough. Okay, all the other techniques that I will show you in this class involve water soluble crayons and pencils. Crayons are like this type of crayons. I have only one type basically carana neocolor number two. So if you're about to buy something like this, and if you would like to explore water soluble crayons, then be sure that you will buy number two series because there is also Parana neocolor but number one. And those are regular wax pastels that don't dissolve with water. And this one yes they dive with water and also there's name Aquarel so be sure not to buy the traditional one. There are also different types of water soluble pastels, wax pastels, so you can test the one that you have at home. And the same thing for pencils, there are different types, different kinds and brands. For example, this one is Faber Castel Albredure. Usually, it is specified as well that they're water soluble. They are named called watercolor pencils or they have symbol of the brush here. The other one is Karan dash, supercolor There's also museum from Karan dash. Very good pencils are also dean ink tints, which are very intense with colors. They're ink based, so usually the colors are more intense. Also here, test the pencils that you have at home, water soluble pencils. I invite you to explore those as well. There will be lesson with watercolors and mixed media textures. Alright, a few items remained. As for watercolors, regular watercolors. I will often use and name granulating watercolors. Those are the example of granulating watercolors. They are in the form of traditional watercolor tubes, but they are also pans as well. And usually it is written. It is specified that they are granulating. I will explain it a little bit better in the class. Basically they have more pigments inside and they create really lovely effect of granulation, which is really perfect for creating textures. So the thing you can do is to watch the charts you can watch on YouTube on multiple places in multiple places in the Internet to see search for granulating colors and pick the one that you like. So since they are quite expensive, like old good water colors, it's something extra. You don't have to have it. But if you would like to dive deeper into water colors, then this is something I would recommend you to take. At the beginning, you can take one or two colors. They really create something magical. Personally, I love them and use them really, very often for other lessons, where we will explore skin fluid textures. If you have muskin fluid at home, then I invite you to explore this medium and see how you can create really fun textures, really fun things. There are different kinds and types. Basically, I will use three of them. I will use in this marker, the one with a really thin nip which seems like needle and also traditional one in the bottle which I don't have right now with me, but it's something like this, Muskin fluid. I use it as well. So if you have at least one kind of them, then prepare it as well. Something extra is also masking tape. You don't have to use it. I will use it sometimes just for exercises to divide paper into smaller areas. What else? Let's talk about brushes. We already sew the base brushes that you will need, but I will also explore different types and shapes of brushes. If you have different brushes at home, they are really great tool to add extra value to your textures to build up textures. For example, sometimes I will use this com brush. You can see it has bristles which are divided. They are great to create like from animals or hair or brass texture. I will also use often dagger brush for grass texture or tree textures as well. Also, this kind of brush, which is good to create leaves and different patterns, shapes with just a very tip of this brush, let's say, I don't know, here I have also different examples of brushes that are strange, and sometimes I use them. Most often, I use the scum brush, but sometimes also this kind of brush tip is useful to create, for example, leaves, grass, et cetera. So if you have this kind of brush, take it with you. Sometimes you can find them in the shops with supplies for kids. It doesn't have to be very expensive, for example, this one was not expensive. It's graduate serious. It means that it's student level. And here, if you see something like this in the shop, it doesn't cost a lot. Maybe you can test it and see what you can create with it. I'm a big fan of strange brushes, and sooner or later, I find always a way to use them. And also, this kind of brushes, this is silicon brush. I will use it to apply masking fluid, the one that is in battle. I always recommend to use those ones instead of using traditional brush with masking fluid because you will ruin your brush. Easily, even if you use old brush that you would throw away, I find that it's difficult to apply masking fluid. So usually I apply it with silicon brush, and I do it also because the silicon brushes create extra lovely textures. You will see it in the specific lesson. So it is also something I would recommend if you work a lot with masking fluid. Also, we will use a toothbrush. I use it often to create textures, especially for starry sky. So that's something you would like to have as well and white ink. So usually I use doctor PH Martins, white ink. They are different kinds, and I'm always happy. They are opaque and really good to work on the top of watercolors or quash. If you don't have white ink, obviously, you can use, for example, quash or acrylic ink or maybe white acrylic as well. The last thing, I suppose, and I think we finished here is bleach. We will use it with liquid watercolors. I have this bottle, and I put regular andr bleach, and I dilute it with Okay, guys, I think it's Oh, hope I didn't forget anything. I'm so excited to start this journey with you. I cannot wait to use all those supplies, and I hope that you will have fun, as well. So let's get started. 4. Watercolor Textures - Basics: In this lesson, you will see the basic technique that we will apply to all the textures. So let's see the main points, the key points, the base for all the textures of the class. Mainly, all the watercolor textures within this class will have the same base, which will be based with three rules. One is to use different colors to mix different watercolor colors. And the second and the third one are two different watercolor techniques. One is wet on dry, and the second is wet on wet. So saying that, let's walk through the presentation. You can do along with me this exercise, especially if you're new to watercolor, then I invite you to try it to warm up your hand, but also to give it a go with watercolors. And if you feel confident and you already did a lot of this kind of textures and you're confident with watercolor, then you can skip it or just watch to see the process, more or less what will be the base for the other lessons. The first exercise would be to start randomly paint with your watercolors, to get confident with watercolors, continue to swatch. You can start with just one color and exercise yourself by trying different values, meaning from dark to light, play with watercolor, see what will happen if you will put a lot of pigment, if you will dilute it with water, what will happen if you will paint on the wet surface, that will be just as a warm up. And now we will jump to the first technique which is wet on dry. But this time, I will mix different colors, and I invite you to do this as well. Since colorful textures are usually better, they are more vibrant and colorful. Yeah, but the good rule to follow, especially if you're a beginner is to use harmonious colors. From the same family or from the same warmth, meaning it can be from the cool family, blues and greens, or you can use colors from the warm range of colors, reds, oranges or red or warm yellows. So I'm using cool colors, but different hues, blues, greens, turquoise, it's more or less. Usually, I pick this kind of colors. I'm into blues and turquoise very often. It's up to you. And what basically what you do is that you paint colors next to each other while they are still wet. But the paper is dry. So you paint and you try to keep your paint wet and add new colors to the wet to the wet colors that are already there. In this way, they will blend in a really beautiful way and create those textured background. So that's more or less technique. As you can see here, I'm adding the color into the wet color. You can do it as well. Feel free to try to experiment. So you can both put the colors next to each other, but also on the top of each other. Right now we will try the same thing but with a wet background. This is so called wet on wet technique. First, you wet the paper with clean water and while the paper is still wet, you paint in the first technique, as in the first step, but over the wet paper. You will see that color blends in a different way. They will spread a little bit more. They will be more I don't know how to say blurred maybe, depends also how many colors you will add. Basically, wet on wet technique gives you the softer blending of colors, and also it's easier to use because it allows your surface to remain wet for a longer time and it's easier to work with water colors when the surface is wet. And now let's recap this lesson. So basically, you will work all the time with these techniques with wet on wet and wet on dry techniques. So try to test them. See what will happen if you use different colors, how they blend with each other, and it's good to use different colors to create those lovely gradients. And also, try to use different density of your watercolor. Then one you can load with a lot of pigment your brush, then use more water, dilute your color, and play also with this kind of gradients and play with transparencies. Now that you saw the basic technique, let's start to explore textures. 5. Sky Textures - Night and Day: Welcome to the lesson where we will paint sky, one of my favorite topics, especially night sky, I will show you how to paint night sky, day sky, cloudy textures, starry textures. You can paint just skies and textures, or you can try to apply them into your own illustration. And this lesson is from the class about the magical watercolor world and painting from Imagination. You can see the other steps of how to create different elements and the whole illustration within this class, but also later on in this class, I will show you other elements that you can use to create your illustration. Right now, let's start with those skis. For this lesson, you can work on only one sheet of paper. It's up to you or you can paint on a bigger surface. We will paint three different kinds of sky, so you can divide your paper into three rectangles or paint on the separate on the three separate sheets of paper, it's up to you. I will use masking tape to divide the paper, and we will paint one night sky and two day skies. What I'm doing here is I'm reducing the strength of the glue by putting the tape first on the flat surface. And if you will do it, then later on the tape will still be adhesive, but will not ruin your paper when you will tear it off. Okay, so let's start with the first rectangle, and we will paint the night sky to do that, prepare your water colors and salt. We will use it to add extra texture. So you can use only one color or three or more colors. Whatever colors you would like to use for your night sky, I will use bluish and grayish colors like indigo, paints gray, and I will also add a little bit of ultramarine. So let's get started. So to paint this guy, we will use wet on dry technique, the one that you saw in the first lesson about basics. So the thing here is to use colors to paint the colors on the dry paper, one next to each other. So my recommendation here for you would be to use quite a dense color. Don't dilute it too much because when it will dry then it will be lighter. So since we are painting the night sky, we want it to be quite dark. But usually, one layer is not enough, but try to be as dense as possible and paint the color next to each other. In random way while the color is still wet, then add the color paint the other color next to it and they will blend in a natural way. I'm switching two, three of my colors. I'm not sure here. I think I use only two colors, it's paint gray and ultramarine, but you can add more colors if you want. And, I will speed up a little bit the process. Finished. And once while the paint is still wet, we will use salt kitchen salt to add extra texture. This is something that you can use in the different situations, not only for the sky, for the sky, it will create those galaxy starry dust texture. And I will use it also, for example, also for the cacti. In the Alesson of this class, you will see it further. And yeah, that's something you can do in a different situations, for example, wood texture or cacti texture, and so on. So leave it to try. Don't remove it while the paint is still wet. Sometimes it's good to leave it overnight or use hair dryer, but be really sure that the paint is dry otherwise, otherwise, it will ruin your paint a little bit. So the last two rectangles will be about the day sky. I will show you two different ways how to paint cloudy textures in the day sky. So for the first one, we will repeat the same steps. We will use the wet or dry technique, and I will use basically the same colors. This is something that I use often for the day sky. I don't you don't really have to use bright and light blue colors, but you can create really lovely sky as well with darker tones, for example, paints gray or indigo, but diluted diluted a lot with a lot of water and paint with light wash of color. Obviously, if you want brighter sky, more maybe summer sky, you can use brighter blues. So what I do is I cover the whole sheet of paper. I premixed my color. Actually, I mixed paints gray with indigo and a little bit of ultramarine, and I'm covering the paper. I can add, obviously a little bit of different colors into my background. Um and also what you can do is to play with different values sometimes by adding the color from your palette and then adding a little bit of water to dilute some areas more. And in this way, you already also create the cloudy textures. So you can see some areas that are lighter and some that are darker. And yeah, try to be a little bit quick because the success here, the same as for the night sky is to have the paint always wet while you're adding color into it. So right now we are creating the cloud texture. So grab your to do that, grab your paper towel. I use normal kitchen towel, but you can also use tissues. And dab the color while it's still wet. In this way, you will lift the color. And also by using the tissue paper, you already create lovely, cloudy texture. And also by lifting the color, you add white color by lifting your blue with paper towel and wala, as you can see in quite a footless way, you can achieve really, really lovely day sky, sorry. And here we will jump into the second way, the second day sky. This time, we will use wet on wet technique. But first, I'm premixing my colors again. I'm diluting them, adding water. I want my color to be really diluted, so I'm creating the puddle of color and I'm premixing some of the colors and some of them are pure colors. And then grab another brush. It is good to use a large brush. But if you don't have, you can use your regular round brush. And I will use the flat brush, which is specifically good to wet your paper for watercolor, wet on wet technique and paint with clean water your background. Cover the whole surface. So the tip here is to have middle with quantity of water, not too wet, not too dry. You don't want your water to you don't want to move water on the paper. When you will see it, it shouldn't move. It should be painted in a uniform way. It should cover in a uniform way and should leave a shiny film of water. So basically, not too dry and not too wet and uniform uniform surface of water. And while your paper is still wet, then grab your color and paint directly into the wet surface. In this way, colors will spread and blend in the more light way, in the more soft way. And as you can see, it creates already lovely cloudy texture. So the thing here is that you don't want to paint over the whole surface, but you want to leave some white areas, which will be clouds. This way is kind of a negative painting. You create clouds by painting around the white paper and where the pigment won't spread, there will be cloud. And so, yeah, that's more or less the thing. And as you can see, by using wet on wet technique, the color spreads in really lovely way, and it already suggests that those are clouds. You can add some extra darker color if you want into some areas. You can leave it like that or you can again dab a little bit of tissue or paper towel into some areas by lifting more color. For example, I'm just lifting more white around the white clouds. But basically, it's up to you as you wish. Let's turn back to our night sky. The layer is already dry, and I'm removing the salt. So as you can see, it created really, really lovely star effect. But I see that the sky is still light and there were some cauliflower textures created. It's nothing wrong, but sometimes you cannot control. So what you can do is you can create the second layer of the same colors in the same way as you did for the first layer, but in a more diluted way to cover your first layer, and then this way, you will darken up your skine and uniform a little bit all the textures. So well, we finished our skies. We painted night sky with the salty texture, and we created day sky, two different day skies with a cloudy texture. So another tip, another extra texture you can add, especially if you're painting the night sky is to sprinkle a little bit of white ink, white wash with a toothbrush and create white dust. So I'm using here doctor PH Martin's white ink, which is very opaque. I have two different kind of ink, and they both work fine. They're very opaque. And the wise is really, really. Yeah, opaque because sometimes if you use quash or acrylic, it could be a little bit translucent. But if you have, for example, acrylic ink or Guash, you can test it and see how it works. So Walla. This really creates lovely galaxy, starry texture. So let's recap the main steps from this lesson. So use wet on dry and wet techniques depending on what type of sky you want to paint. Use different colours, mix different colours and also try to use different density to create varied values. So, for example, for the night sky, we used really dense color and for the day sky, we diluted it in a quite significant way. For the textures, use paper tower for clouds and salt and white ink in order to create stardust textures. And again, let's see the illustrations, different kind of illustrations that you can make with this kind of sky. So the favorite theme of mind, the moon, night sky, where you can really experiment with starry textures, with galaxy textures, and moon as well. And, yeah, that's something I really love to explore. But obviously, you can also paint the sky. And usually I paint winter scenes, so the sky is more cloudy and gray, but there are also different kind of sky that I'm sure you can explore as well with brighter colors. It's up to you. So again, explore as you wish this lesson, you can paint only different kind of skies or you can create the whole illustration or different small illustrations. It's really up to you. Not 6. Sky Textures - Cosmic Sky: Welcome to the second lesson about skies, where we will basically do similar things as in the first lesson, but we will add some new tips and new elements to add extra texture to paint our galaxy cosmic sky. So this lesson was in the class about being inspired by Byzantium and where I painted Mosaic, Byzantium sky, inspired by the mausoleum and by the chapel that I saw both in Ravenna and Palermo in Italy. So let's get started. For this sky, I will choose more colors. I will use more colors, but the technique is rather the same that for the previous lesson, both for the night and day skies, which is wet on try, but it will be something in between because the first layer that we will paint will be wet and dry. But while the paint and the color will be wet, you can still add a little bit of new colors into it. I will also show you some extra tip to paint to add another texture. So in this class, I also painted at stars with gold, watercolors and gouache. You can do it as well, or you can just stop by painting the sky. We'll pick your colors. I will make some dark and light tones because also in this class, I was creating the color palette, which I used to paint sky and the color palette was also inspired by the Byzantium art and by the mosaics that I saw. And the mosaics were made with really bold and vibrant colors. And I'm a big fan of vibrant colors. So this is what I will use to paint this galactic sky. Also, I will add a little bit of granulating colors. So the first tip to add extra texture to your watercolor textures, both sky textures or whatever kind of background you want to use is to use granulating colors. So if you're new to watercolors, there is a kind of colors that you can find from different brands, and usually they are called or named granulating or supra granulating colors. For example, Shrimnk has sets of this kind of colors, rem Brand. But I guess that probably most of the brands have this in their offer. What does it mean? It means that the color that you use have multiple pigments inside. So while you paint with it. But when you paint with it, the pigments will separate and create lovely granulations of different pigments. As you can see right now, I'm combining two techniques wet on wet and wet on dry. I started with a super granulating grayish color and then I painted on the top of it with the blue. So you can do it as well if you feel comfortable with watercolors. You can switch techniques. I mean, you can add you can paint and add new colors into your drip white paper. And while it's still wet, you can also add darker colors on the top of the wet paint or the color that you painted. You can do it later on, obviously, but you will have to be quick because the color will have to be so wet. That's why that's the only reason why I'm doing it right now. I'm just, um, using the fact that the color is still wet. Also, if you want to add your color next to the color to paint the color next to the color that already is there, you will have to be sure that it's still wet. I'm repeating the same things thousands and thousands of times, but never mind because if you're new here, then probably you hear it for the first time and if you're new to watercolor, then it's good to know it. So what I'm meaning is that the green color that I painted right now next to the blue color, I painted it while the blue was still wet, and also right now I'm doing it. In this way, you will avoid this cauliflower effect when the color will dry. I will create cauliflower and you can avoid it by painting while the watercolor is still wet. So in this way, your color will blend nicely. Your colors will create lovely gradients. So yeah, that's it. The only philosophy is that your color must be always wet. In both situations when you paint next to the color or on the top of it. Okay, so as you can see, already, really lovely granulating texture is being is showing through and I continue to paint this light wash of color by mixing the green and the blues. But whatever colors you will use for your galactic sky, it really doesn't matter. You can use also darker colors already at the beginning. It's up to you. I basically I basically used those greeny turquoise color because I was inspired by the Mosaics. And that's the reason why I picked them. But since they are really light, I will paint on the top of it. I will add blue indigo colors to deepen and darken the sky. This is what I'm doing now. I'm painting, I'm adding new colors on the top of my first layer, which is still wet as you can see the color spreads in a really lovely and soft way. And you can see also the granulations from my granulating colors. I used for the green malachite of the Roman Schmal Aquarius, those are polish watercolors, polish brand, and it's really delicate. But still, you can see the granulation. I also use Schminkz. I think I used Shire blue and cascade green from Daniel Smith. There are lots of gorgeous pnulating colors out there. So explore whatever colors you you like. If you have some other granulating colors which are warm, you can do it as well. Why not? You can create, for example, purple and orange galaxy. Those colors also exist out there in the universe. So why not? And as you can see, my layer is still wet. So to achieve that, first you have to be quick. But the other thing is to use really good quality watercolor paper because that's the characteristic of a good cotton based paper that it keeps water for a long time. It doesn't dry, and it absorbs water and keeps the humidity for a long time. Also, maybe don't do it in the full sun warm day because it will dry immediately. If that's the case, then maybe you would like to cover your window in the direct light or work in a darker place, cooler place. And yeah, you can see those lovely transitions and granulating that is already happening there. So as you can see, I added quite a bit of darker tones. I continue adding darker greens and blues into my wet background. I do it in a random way. So I'm trying to have as many gradients of my colors as possible. And once I'm happy and while the paint is still wet, I'm adding extra texture by spraying water into my wet background. So the tip here is to spray the water while the background is still wet, but it's a little bit tricky because it shouldn't be too wet and too dry. So I'm using this bottle inside. There is water, and I'm spraying the water on the top of my background. So again, it's a little bit tricky because the effect depends on the humidity of your background. So it shouldn't be too wet. It shouldn't be too dry, if it's dry, that it won't show through. But also if it's too wet, then adding extra water won't change, basically. Anything and the texture won't show through. So you have to test it. You have to give it a try. Do few attempts. Sometimes I'm able to do really beautiful texture, and sometimes it won't show through. So that's a little bit of alchemy, but it really gives beautiful outcome. So give it a try. If you don't have a bottle with spry with water, sorry, you can use, for example, the bottle that you use for ironing or for the flowers. Or you could use, again, toothbrush. Or brush to paint with hard bristles to sprinkle your water on the top. So here I'm sprinkling and sparkling my water on the top, and maybe you can already see some of the texture showing through. But I think it was a little bit too wet and it's not so obvious, but it's still there. So leads is the final outcome. Here you can see the beautiful gorgeous pigments, the granulating pigments, they do really magic. And here also, I use the same background to paint the peacock for the classes project. So you can use this kind of texture for whatever objects you want, not only for the sky or galaxies. Let's recap briefly the main steps and the main tips for this. Lesson. So we mix wet on wet and wet on dry technique to create our sky. In both cases, techniques, be sure that your watercolor is always wet and to maintain your colour wet, be sure to be quick and to use good quality cotton watercolor paper. And for adding extra textures, you can use granulating type of colors and also spray water to your wet background to add those lovely extra textures. So I cannot wait to see what you will create, and let's proceed with other textures. 7. Background Textures: In this lesson, I will show you how you can apply textures into your background. So basically, we will use the same tools and techniques as for the previous lessons, but I will show you how you can apply them into backgrounds. Again, I'm showing you different illustrations where I applied textured background. So you can do both things here. Again, you can paint just simple textures, and later on, you can paint or draw on the top of them and create illustration with this background. Or you can just explore backgrounds on their own. This lesson is from the negative watercolor world. And again, I won't explain you step by step, the technique, the negative painting or how I created the final illustration, but I want to just show you how I applied textures to create this kind of background here. So let's get started. So as I told you, this lesson comes from the class about the negative painting where we painted the forest scene. So I won't be showing here how to use the negative painting technique and how to paint forest. Mm. And if you already did this class, then probably you can always learn something new here because what I will show you here is how I created textures within this project to create textured background. So maybe there will be something new for you as well. And if you're new here, then I also invite you to this particular lovely technique if that's something you would like to explore. Anyway, um, so oftentimes I use this kind of texture in my illustrations. And basically, we will mix the things that we made in the previous lessons about sky and mix techniques, wet on wet technique, and wet on dry technique. And we will build up the textures with the techniques that I showed you with spray water and with paper towel. So for this particular project, I started with wet on wet technique. But it's rather irrelevant. You can also start with wet on dry technique. I use wet on wet because I want to have very wet surface. I wanted to create more textured background, and I think that wet on wet technique is a little bit easier. It lets your paper to remain wet for a longer time. And in this way, also, your watercolors will work. You can work with watercolors in an easier way when you have wet background and you want those nice blending and nice gradients. So the other thing here is we will use, again, granulating colors. But first, pick more colors, three, four colors, again, to create lovely blendings. And again, it's easier if you will use similar colors like from the same range of temperature, cool or warm. But do whatever you wish and see what will happen. I'm always a fan of experimenting and learning from your experience. So here I'm using granulating colors. I often use them if I paint backgrounds, You already probably know it. I always talk about it and I told this in the previous lesson. And here I'm using glacier green, I think, from Schmincke and cascade green of Daniel Smith. And those are really gorgeous granulating turquoise, light turquoise and green bottle green colors. Really, really love me. And the third color is regular light blue. And since this project is about negative painting, it means that I will paint multiple layers above each other, one layer above on the top of the previous layer. So I'm working really light because I will build up the values, the darker tones with every new layer. That's why the first layer is really light. It depends on the project that you want to work on. If it's only an exercise, then it's quite irrelevant. You can make light layer of color and you can make it more intense, more saturated. And if you working on a specific project, then you have to think, is it sky? Is it night sky? Is it day sky and then decide if you want your texture to be light or dark. So here what I'm doing is that I'm adding colors while the surface is still wet and you can see already beautiful granulating that is showing through and here you can see that we can use, again, a paper towel as we did for the sky for the clouds in the day sky. But this time we can use it to build up texture to add extra texture to our watercolor background, and you can do it in many contexts. Here, it's just to make textures, but you can do it, for example, to make rocks or not only sky, but rocks or sand, many different contexts. Um so here I painted the second layer on the top of the previous one, and you can see that the tissue texture is there. And here I will spray the water again, as I did for the galaxy sky, for the cosmic sky to create a little sparkling texture with the dots of water. So again, you can use this technique, tip this tip in different situations for different textures, not only for the sky, not only to create starry sky, but also just to add extra effects to your background. And here you can see that I continue to add this kind of textures for different layers for this project. I have multiple layers painted already, and I continue to add for each and every layer some textures. So they will show through. Even if there will be another layer painted on the top. So the parts that will remain uncovered will have this kind of texture. Look how lovely effects you can create. And here I will show you what will happen if there are some random dots of water that fall over your illustration. That happens also if you spray the water. But in this case, just a random drop of water fell on my illustration and I decided to use it in my advance and I dapp it. So with the lifting technique, the color underneath became lighter because I lifted the color. So this is also something to explore. You can do this kind of drops on the purpose. So yeah, it's up to you. And here I wanted to just to leave you with a small preview of how I finished the project and those kind of textures. The first is botanical texture to draw trees and grass and botanical elements, and the other is how to use masking fluid to build up the textures. But those will be topics of the next lessons. So here I'm just leaving you a brief preview of what we will be doing in this class later on. Let's recap the major tips from this lesson to create textured backgrounds. You can use wet on wet technique, which allows you better your watercolors to work and to blend nicely. You can use granulating color, which adds extra textures to your background. You can use lifting technique with paper towel or spray water on the wet color, or you can lift single drops of water to create lighter dots of color, which is also something. That you can work for your texture. I cannot wait to see how you will use the skills from this lesson to paint your textured backgrounds. And if you're curious on how to use textures for botanical elements, let's proceed. 8. Tree Textures - Trunk: Let's start lessons about how you can create textures that you can apply to paint trees. Let's start with tree trunk. I will show you how you can apply the same tools and techniques from previous lessons to create tree trunk. You can do it in many different ways. For example, by applying salt as well. But I will show you the other tools from other lessons. And this lesson is from the class about making a family tree where I show you how you can paint this kind of tree. Let's get started. So this lesson comes from the class about painting a family tree. Use this painting, this watercolor illustration to be a base for a family tree, but it doesn't matter for purpose of this class, we will just be painting a watercolor tree. So I'm starting with wet on dry technique. I just paint my watercolor trunk. I already sketched it beforehand because that was important for me for this specific project to know how to lay out my branches, because of the family photos that I put later on on the top. Anyway, I'm painting with wet on dry. I'm using traditional brown colors. This time, I don't use any granulating colors, but obviously it is always something you can consider if you want to add extra texture to your water colors. As you can see, I repeat basically the same things, but I think it's good because um, small steps, small things, little quantity of things to learn, but repeating them continuously help you to build up those skills without being overwhelmed. So sorry if I will repeat the same steps over and over again in those lessons, but I think, yeah, this is the better way to learn new skills. Here I'm using specific one, premixed brown. But obviously, again, you can blend more colors, add more hues of brown, brownish colors or whatever colors you want to use for your trunk. Next to each other, it's up to you. Right now, I'm painting the first lighter layer of brown, and then I will paint a darker one on the top. So I will spit up a little bit of process because that's more or less the techniques that we used. Or other previous lessons. The only thing here maybe the tip I would give you if you want to paint really tiny lines for the thinner branches, use a good quality brush. If it has a good tip, then you can just um use the very tip of your brush to paint the thinner lines, and it's all about how you paint your brush stroke. So when you push your brush in a harder way, then you will get thicker lines. So try to exercise yourself, your hand and try to paint lines from thin to thick with just one brush. It could be a good way to test yourself within this kind of project. As you can see, the thing that I did during the painting is that I use different values, meaning sometimes the color was more dense and sometimes it was more diluted. It is also something you can do in order not to paint a flat color, but to build this texture with values of color. Here I'm adding darker tones, darker values, but I'm using darker color, not just more dense color, but I'm using very dark. I think it's sepia color. On the top of the first layer while it's still wet and the color will blend and create those gradients of colors which are also very good to paint texture. So Valla, you can see also how with building up tones with the tonal differences between light and dark, you can also create lovely texture. And Voila, here is our old friend again, paper towel or tissue, and we will lift color again and create lovely texture. So I told you during the other lessons that you can use it in multiple contexts. We saw how to build texture for clouds in this way for the textured background. You could use it for rock, sand and here, I'm using it to add texture to wood. Again, the same tool, the same technique used in multiple ways. I'm curious if you will come up with other ideas how to use this kind of technique. So in the class, I also painted leaves for the tree. And when I painted leaves, I thought that I would like to add some extra texture to the wood and paint those specific lines and veins that are on the trunk on the wooden trunk. Basically, you could stop over here and you could leave the trunk as it is. So it's up to you. You can see the next step that I will do, the second layer and decide which one you prefer and which one works better for you to paint a trunk texture. So I'm painting on the top of the very dry layer. It's always important if you're layering, if you paint another layer on the top of the previous one with watercolors, you have to be sure that the first layer, the previous layer is dry. Otherwise, you will lift up the color and create holes. And also, the other thing, the other thing to consider is to paint really light colors rather than create very dense intense layers of colors. Try to build really light wash of colors because watercolors are translucent and you want to use this characteristic of this medium. It's really beautiful to see translucent layers of colors. And also, you want immediately create flat layers of color, but you build values. You build up the tones and layers. Obviously, if you use guash, for example, and if you like to work with a flat colors, then it's another story. That's your choice of style, which is valid and good as well. But if you would like to work with textures and watercolor, then tip of using translucent more light layers of colors is something to consider. So I paint random veins, let's say, of what? I'm not looking at specific at nothing specific. I'm just imagine obviously, you can look at the photo reference to see more or less how to build this kind of situation, how to paint trunk, or you can improvise as I do. And I will speed up the process because the only thing that I'm doing here that I'm painting this translucent layer, translucent lines, and I will see you when I finish. Again, a small recap of the steps from this lesson to paint your tree trunk, you can use both wet on dry or wet on wet technique. It's basically up to you. You can use granulating colors to add this extra texture as well. You can use lifting technique with paper towel. You can also add salty texture to your wet color as well. And also, if you want, you can paint a second layer of wooden veins and remember to paint every layer in a light and translucent way. If you're curious how I painted the leaves for this tree, then obviously you can jump into the original class. Otherwise, in the next lesson, I will show you how to paint tree crowned and leafy textures. So see you there. 9. Tree Textures - Crown: Let's continue the tree topic. This time we will see how to create tree crowns and leaves. If you already saw some of my classes, then you know that I'm a big fan of trees. I often paint forests, woody, scenery. So I love to come back to this topic. Here, I will show you different tools, how you can paint trees, the green base, but also how you can paint leaves. And again, this lesson is from the class about magical watercolor world, and I will show you how to use different tools, different kind of brushes, how you can use different kind of strokes to create those lovely textures, and they're very useful because you can apply them both to trees and grass. So I hope you will have fun. Let's get started. If you want, you can sketch your trees beforehand, or you can just paint free hand style without sketching. It's up to you. The thing you can consider already beforehand is painting different shapes of trees. So prepare your green colors or the colors that you want to use or your trees, and I will show you different techniques to paint watercolor paint crowns with watercolor. I picked both green and yellow ochre colors for my trunks, but it's up to you depends what style and what colors you want to give to your trees. So we can skip the first example from this lesson because it's basically just painting with one color. But in the second example, we will use the technique from the previous lessons wet on dry with painting with different colors. So as you can see, I pick different tones and hues of yellow and green and I let the colors glend with each other, and I use just wet on dry technique, but it already created lovely leafy texture for the crown. And then we will proceed and add leaves into it. The second method is also the same from the previous lessons, but wet on wet technique. Again, the, the same exact things we used for sky and backgrounds, and we will use it for trees. Here, paint first, plain flat wash with water and while the surface is still wet, add water colors into it. Again, pick different colors for your tree, not only one and let your color blend and and this way, you can see two different types of how you can use this technique wet on dry and wet on wet. Both work really well. And we can create lovely trees with the same technique as for the previous lessons. So in the lesson, I painted tree branches and trunk if you're curious, then jump into the class into the lesson from the original class. Nothing paints fancy just using watercolor and white ink here. And right now, let's see how we can add extra texture, texture. Maybe, I don't know if it's a good word. But yeah, there are some tips and techniques that you can consider to be a texture in order to paint leaks and to add them to your crown. So the first one is using very tip of your brush and painting tiny, tiny leaves. As you can see, I'm leaving just a drop of very diluted color, and there is a lot of color. The brush is loaded with water we color. And I'm painting those very drops of color, actually, and it means that they will be very diluted. So the thing you can do here is to play with the density of your color. You can use both very diluted and more dense drops of color in order to create different tones and build up leafy texture. Here you can see the leaves that are already dry. They seemed very dark at the beginning, but once the color is dry, you can see that the color was actually really diluted and light. And you can change that alternate with a darker tones, darker leaves, and um by playing around, you can also intertwine leaves, paint on the top of each other, so you can create really lovely lovely, leafy texture. It is something that I also will show you in the masking fluid lessons. I will show you how you can create really lovely alternating intertwining leafy texture for your trees by the use of different layers of watercolor and masking fluid. But to start on, you can start on. You can start easy with this kind of textures, watercolor textures. So we will do the same for the second tree, but this time, I will add another color. I will use both watercolor and ink, different colors of watercolors and also here you can play with different tones. You can add more diluted dots and drops of colour, then add some more dense color and play with tones with transparency with different colors. I will speed up the process so you will see the final effect. For the last three, I will use white ink. You can use whitewash or white diluted acrylic. And also here I will try to play with transparency. Some of the strokes will be more flat and opaque and some of them more translucent. You can do that by alternating the intensity and how you will dilute your color. Sometimes you can use a pure ink without water, and then alternate with diluted color, which will be more translucent. Also by painting, while painting, you will use the brush at the beginning, will be loaded with a lot of colors, but each and every next brushstroke will be less intense, less opaque. So that's something I really like and enjoy doing in my art to create transparency effect effect of transparent layers. And you can try to do that by painting leaves, as I told before, by using different quantity of water that you mix into your color, for example. This is the moment where you can experiment different tools and different kind of brush you have at home. If you have, for example, a calligraphy pen or a bamboo pen or something sharp that you can paint thin lines with, then you can test it. I use it often to paint to paint grassy texture, but also for trees, for example, for yew tree and pine tree, maybe, It allows you to paint really thin, delicate lines. So I'm using white ink here again, the same that I used for leaves, but you can also use watercolor. I will show you also how to use this tool in order to paint texture with liquid fluid with masking fluid, sorry and a dip pen. So you can use it in really many ways. You can use it for many different mediums. And again, here I'm just using regular white ink. You can use squash, for example, which is more opaque and watercolor. Just be sure to wash your pen after you use it, especially if you're using acrylic ink or acrylic because otherwise it will remain on your pen and won't go away, so be aware of what medium you use. To paint very thin lines, you can obviously use a thin brush. If you have at home a brush, usually it's like zero or 00 or triple zero brush to paint really tiny, tiny details. I know that it's really tricky. A lot of artists are continuously searching for this perfect brush that paints really thin lines, delicate lines. So I'm telling you it's not easy. The one that I am using here is from Rub Blof. This is natural brush. So it's not very eco friendly, but I bought it once for painting icons because I know they really have this very thin line and they are able to create really tiny, tiny strokes, and it's something that icons is really important. And I use it very rarely for watercolors. I usually don't use them. And I have this one. It's really old. I think it already has like ten years, and you can see that it's still working. So a lot of bristles are gone, so it's like half it's thinner than it was originally because a lot of bristles were consumed, but it's even better because the lines are even thinner. So once I use a brush like this until one or two left. So yeah. Anyway, I wanted to tell you that if you have a good quality brush, then you can paint really thin lines, maybe not this thin, not this thin, but thin lines even with the very tip of your brush. So right now I'm jumping into different shapes of brushes. So this one is this triangle brush. It is made to paint leaves, basically, flower leaves or plant leaves. But I use it also in a different way by using the very tip of it and touching just as you can see the top of the brush, you can paint those tiny triangles, this kind of birdy shape, and I invite you to experiment with different kinds of brushes if you have them at home. Try to see what will happen if you will use the tip of the brush. What kind of strokes you can paint and where you could use them. It could be really fun and ham kind of experimenting and exploration. Every time that I see strange brush and shop, I usually buy it. And, you know, it doesn't have to be nothing fancy. The one that I'm using now is not expensive. It's a student level, really. So maybe you can find this kind of brush, even in the shop with art supplies for kids. So try them, test them. I'm not always sure at the beginning where I buy this kind of brush, how to use them, but you can just simply do brush strokes, and you will see that sooner or later, you will find a way to use them if you're kind of experiment person as I am. So the other thing here is that I'm playing with tones again with values, a different quantity of pigment, more diluted, more dense color, and building up those translucent layers. And I use it to paint leafy or this needles from pine tree, something like that. But when I'm seeing it now, I think it also seems like a map from above with mountain and mountainy land. So you see that right now. I think I can use it in other contexts. Another type of brush that I use very, very often is this dagger brush. You can also maybe know it as a sword brush. It means that it has this diagonal kind of bristles. This one is graduate. It means that it's student level. So again, doesn't have to be very fancy. There are different kind of dagger brush sometimes with a lot more of bristles and longer bristles depends on how you want to use them, when you want to use them. But most often I use this short brush, short bristles, brushes. And yeah, you can paint this kind of lines, and I use them very often to paint grass, but also leaves, like in this case, you can alternate directions and again, values from more dense to more translucent one. You can intertwine. You can cross them the lines, change directions, play around, and you will see how lovely textures you can do with this kind of brush. You can add also some dots like berries, so you can experiment. You can mix different brush strokes, different tools, see what will happen. You can cross them, mix them together, change colors, change the values, change the brush tips, experiment, have fun, and see what you can come up with with different tools. Maybe you will use some different tools. Let me know in the project or in the comments in the discussion, what you will come up with. Paint different kind of trees and see what will happen. And you can obviously paint just single trees or you can paint the whole illustration with different kind of trees. You will see how lovely it looks together where all the trees are near to each other in the one illustration. So have fun. I cannot wait to see what you will come up with. And in the other lesson, I will show you more or less the same techniques. In a different contexts, I will show you how you can create grassy green textures for your illustrations. Let's summarize the main steps for your tree cram textures. You can use both wet and wet and wentum dry technique, but use different colors to blend, use different tools for leaves, different brush tips and strokes, and also try to vary the density of the color in order to create different values. 10. Grass Textures: H. Let's continue our green textures, and we will use the tools and the techniques that we saw already and see how you can paint grass. So again, I often paint grass. I often paint green scenery. And here you can see different tools and techniques that you can use to enrich your illustrations to create those lovely grass textures. Let's get started. So the first step here is to create backgrounds for your grass. The same thing we did for the other lessons. I'm using here wet on dry technique by mixing different colors, and it's up to you. You can also use wet on wet techniques. You can paint the whole sheet of paper. I'm preparing for different grass backgrounds to swat different textures, but it's up to you. So for the first, kind of textures, I will use, again, my trusty thin brush that I used for the tree crowns, and it's very thin. It's consumed. So very few gristles left there, and it allows me to paint really thin. Really thin strokes. But I must say that don't worry if you don't have a very thin brush. Try to use some good quality brush if you have at home, even if it's bigger, or if it has a good quality tip, then it should maintain really fine tip lines. And with a bigger round brush, you can paint little dots. Also, it's a matter of how much do you exercise yourself? How much do you paint strokes. And it's a matter really of work and exercises. So don't worry if your lines aren't very thin, just try to do as many strokes as possible. Also, the good tip to use brush and to paint good brush strokes is to use the whole wristle of yours. So try to be loose with your movements, use the whole hand, maybe even the whole arm if the strokes are bigger and the whole wrist, for sure. Other tool that we already saw in the previous lesson is the pen, dip pen. I use it very often to draw. I don't use it for typography because I'm not so good in calligraphy and typography, but it's a good tool to have those really thin lines and dots. And you can paint both with inks, white ink, but you can experiment with different mediums, squash, different inks, or you can even use watercolor if you want. So this is something I use very often for grass. You can paint with different density here, again, and different strokes, smaller, bigger. And again, another tool from the previous lesson, bugger brush, and the same kind of strokes that we used for tree trunk. This time we will use it for grass. Again, here, experiment with different directions with different density as well, and you can cross your lines, your strokes, intertwine them. Change and vary the values, the density translucent and more opaque. And you can see that sometimes if the strokes are still wet and you paint on top of them, they will blend really nicely. So that's something to experiment as well. And you can also play with your brush. And for example, here I'm dividing the bristles of the brush. While it's a little bit more dry, it shouldn't be too wet, so it will allow the bristles to divide more easily. And try to use this kind of strokes to paint your grass texture as well. So if you don't have a dagger brush, you can also use round thin brush as well, and just to try to paint as thin strokes as possible. Again, it's a matter of exercises to be precise. The more you will paint these kind of strokes, the more you will see that you will become more precise and neat. With your strokes, here I am using watercolor. Now I switched again to dagger brush, but, the same kind of strokes here, watercolors, and also diversing density of colors. So since it's quite repetitive, it's quite the same that we did for the trunk trees, so I will leave it like this. If you want experiment this kind of strokes and textures with different tools with different mediums. And if you want, you can make just grass samples or you can try to make the whole illustration. So right now, let's recap again the steps for the grassy textures. So as a background as a base, we use still the same techniques. You can paint wet on wet or wet on dry, the background with different colors, and then to paint grass, use different tools, different kind of brush tips and brush strokes, and also play with the density to create varied values and transparency layers. And remember that in order to paint those really nice lines. It's a matter of exercise, but remember to move this wrist and not to be rigid in order to paint lovely, really fine line. 11. Mixed Media Textures: Okay. Now that we already explore watercolors, I'm sure you feel more comfortable right now and we can start to add a little bit of other materials. It won't be nothing overwhelming. We will see just two or three new materials that we will mix to our watercolors, and I'm sure that you will enjoy this technique. I use it a lot as a base for my illustration. I create often just single textured backgrounds or I paint on the top of it as well. So let's see how to use those new tools to create lovely backgrounds and how to put your illustration into the next level just by using those simple tools. Just a quick reminder that this lesson comes from the class about exploring architectures and applying them into illustration where we paint different bodies, as well as the illustration that I will show you in this lesson. For this lesson, you will need water soluble cryons and pencils. Crans meaning pastels, those are wax pastels from Karen dash, No coolor number two, they are water soluble, and if you don't have them, then maybe you have water soluble pencils. You can try them as well, or maybe you have a different brands. Something that is water soluble will work. Test and try what you can make with it. So again, the, let's say, rule for this kind of texture is to use different colors, the same as for water colors. But this time, we start from drawing dry pastels. So just dry with the pastels, random strokes, random colors next to each other, and then take a brush loaded with water, and dissolve your crayons, your color. And as you can see, this kind of medium creates really lovely, lovely texture, and it's really nice to use it as a base layer for your project or for your elements of illustrations. What you can do is that you can gradually add different colors. You can do it next to the colors on the dry paper or as I'm doing here by drawing on the top of the wet surface. So it will add some different effect because it's different than if you would paint directly on the dry paper. Some of the strokes won't dissolve and fully, they will remain, but it doesn't matter. I don't worry about it because still it's a very nice effect. So try to do that. Try to draw random swatches of color here and there next to each other or on the top of each other, mix them together with water and experiment. So the other way you can do this kind of background is to mix it with watercolors. So we will do the same thing as we did in the other lessons, painting different colors next to each other. And then we will add to them our crayons. So in this way, your watercolors become some kind of mixed media background. You mix those two materials and also remember to test different colors And again, you can lay around, draw with the cran sorry next or on the top of your watercolor while it's still wet. And right now I'm using a different brush to mix those two, to blend those two with water. This one is a cam brush which has already divided bristles and it's made to paint fur, hair or grass. I use it very often. So something you can consider to add extra texture to your already textured background is to use different kind of brushes to mix the colors. So you will see you will add different fan brush strokes into your texture. And this is also texture wise, another element, right to build up the texture. And here I'm adding watercolor. So basically play with those two watercolor, water soluble crayons, mix them together and see what will happen. And the other material that we will use are water soluble pencils. There are different kinds, different brands. Again, if you want to explore them more and see how they work, you can jump into my original class that I showed you at the beginning of this lesson. And right now, let's test the wet on wet technique. So painting with water and, again, painting different colors on the top of it just as we did for the day sky, for example, and I'm doing it only because I want my paper to remain wet for a longer time because now I will test different pencils and different strokes. So I would like you here to play with your pencils to try and test different strokes. This is a great exercise also to loosen up your hand and your wrist to warm up your hand. And test different materials, different pencils and strokes. So this is something I do really often. I play with strokes. This relax me a lot, and I really enjoy making textures in this way. So this is one of the ways you can create background texture by working with water soluble pencils on the top of the wet. Let's let's repeat it. It should be wet surface because in this way, you will see how pencil stroke dissolve in the wet surface. The stroke will spread a little bit. Some of the strokes will be more visible, more dominant and bold depends on the pencil that you're using. Some of them will be softer. And you can play with different types of strokes, different forms. Those can be lines, circles, or whatever shape comes to your mind. If you have in mind a specific project, then you can think of what kind of strokes you can paint. For example, this kind of dts and circles could be good for, let's say, ground full of small pebbles and rocks maybe dust, sand, or if you want just strokes, it can be grass again. Also switch the colors of your pencils and if you have different types and brands, test them as well and see what kind of texture they will paint, what kind of strokes they will paint, experiment and enjoy. It's all about right now just experimenting, nothing defined, nothing final here. And if you like expressive strokes, expressive kind of art, this is also a great exercise for you to loosen up your hand and wrist. And you will see that every time you will do better and better, and you will paint in a more free way. So here you can see different kinds. For example, more intense yellow is ink tints from Darwin. Their ink tanks pencil are ink based, so the color is more bold, more vibrant. So this is also the reason why I encourage you to test different materials you have at home. But if you have just only one type of pencil, never mind, use the thing you have already at home. Okay, so the second part for this kind of texture is using other materials. I will use crayons. So those are crayons, even if they seem pencils, but they are greasy. They are quite oily. That's why I will use them here with again, with neo pastel wax, water soluble crayons. Again, the technique is the same. Paint wet on wet and paint the color draw on the wet color while it's still wet. But this time, use your crayons if you have them and see what kind of texture you can make with them. So basically, here the colors are bolder, more vibrant because they are oily based, and it means that they leave more color. And also because they are high pigmented, as well. So they're good quality. And as you can see, again, I'm playing around here. I'm switching colors. I'm making different strokes. And once I'm ready, once I feel warmed up and I tested my materials, then I'm ready to jump into illustration. So I will show you how you can apply this kind of texture both to one element and to the whole illustration. So let's start by painting a bird. Again, this lesson is included in the original class. Here, it's super quick version when I'm just briefly showing you the texture, the technique. But if you want to dive deeper into this kind of textures and materials, then I invite you to see the original class. And again, we will basically do the same what we did in the first part of this lesson. First painting the background and, again, using watercolors. And remember to be quite generous with using diluted and wet washes of color in order to leave your background wet as long as possible. And while the color is still wet, let's do some magic with our materials. So I will use both wax pastels and water soluble pencils, and we will paint feathers. We will build the texture to paint feathers this time. So obviously, you can think to paint it in the different contexts. Again, in the second part, I will show you how you can use this texture to paint the grass background. But now we're painting bird. You can think of painting the bird as well, or you can apply this kind of texture on whatever element that you want on whatever subject. That you want to draw. So what I'm doing here is I'm painting on the top of the wet water color, and I'm switching different colors. And basically, I'm using neo coolors wax pastels. And what you can do is mix and switch between different materials, switch to water soluble pencils like I'm doing here. And I will speed up the process because basically I will do I will apply the same technique all over again, and I will draw also feathers again if you want to dive deeper into this kind of project and illustration, feel free to head to the other class, and right now, I just speed up the process. Et's skip to the second illustration. This time we will paint textured grass background for our project. So again, as we did for the grass background here, but this time mixed media, so we're adding again, our wax pastels. I did this corner with a masking tape to leave the margins white. And also the yellow thing you see in the middle is the masking fluid. I also explained it in the original class. So here I will just focus on the textured background. And what we're doing here is painting with a wet on dry technique. You already know it by heart, I'm sure, and adding extra texture with. I'm curious if you know what I want to say. Yes, granulating water colors. So again, this is my favorite thing to do mixing and blending different granulating colors here, different greens. And again, the secret tip here is to leave your colors wet in a way that they will blend nicely. Otherwise, if the color is dry and you paint with the other color next to it, it won't blend. Okay? So that's the main rule. If you feel more comfortable, then you can make wet on wet technique. Basically, you can paint with water first and then paint different colors on the top of the water, it's up to you. And I'm painting with watercolors, but the new thing is that I will add water soluble neo colors, wax pastels. So as in the first part of this lesson, I'm just adding color next to the watercolor. I'm drawing with neo pastel and then I'm dissolving it with water. And I will combine those two, let's say, steps, watercolors, pastels watercolors, pastels. And you can draw with pastel next to your watercolor on the dry paper, or you can also paint on the top of it while the color is still wet as we did in the previous parts of this lesson. So the good thing about this technique that you can continue building up the layers if you're not happy with the first layer, if it's too light, or maybe, I don't know, you just want to paint over some part of the drawing that you don't like. You can do it. For example, here, I'm building the texture. I'm basically drawing the second layer. I'm adding value because I think the background is still too light, and there is not enough texture, in my opinion. So I'm painting on the top of the first layer. It's already dry and I'm using water colors to cover to paint some darker colors. And I will also use pastels to do that. So again, I will repeat the same steps as for the first layer, and I will, um Yeah, paint the background until I'm happy with the values, with the depth of it, with the colors. But the tools and the techniques are always the same. So if the color is still wet, use it to use it in your advantage by using the pastels. And if it's dry, it doesn't matter because you can draw over it again, and then you can dissolve it with water if you want, or Or if it's dry, then it's even better if you will use watercolor on the top. Because it is better to paint the second layer of the watercolor if the first layer is already dry. Here, for example, I draw I drew with no pastels on the dry background on the dry surface and now I'm solving it with wet brush. Again, I'm using the calm brush to add extra texture, extra hairy texture. So I'm sure you already you're feeling this technique. It's something let's say instinct based. There's no hard rule here. The only rules that I already repeated here and in the adolescensO watercolors, but I will repeat it in the last steps when we will summarize this technique. So enjoy the process. I'm leaving you here and have fun. But summarize this lesson using our mixed media. So we use water soluble wax pastels and pencils, and you can create textures by using them as they are or mixed with watercolors. So test different colours and brands if you have them at home, and if not, then test whatever materials you have at home, test them together with watercolor, mix it, play around and see what will happen. You can apply these kind of textures into the illustration, the single element or the whole background as you wish. Again, here it's up to you if you want to explore the textures by them own or if you want to paint illustration with this kind of texture. So here again, here's the birdie and the backgrounds that I create with this kind of texture. Enjoy. 12. Liquid Watercolor - Background Textures: Let's start the part where we will use liquid watercolors. I really love this medium, and I use it a lot in my art. I have several classes about how to use liquid watercolors and the specifics of this medium. And let's start with simple backgrounds. And in the other lessons, you will see other types of textures with really fun tools and techniques. So for these lessons, obviously you will need liquid watercolors. There are different brands and types. For example, eclines. I think they are the most common out there, and for your textured background, you will need at least two colors, again, the same as for the traditional watercolors. Right now, I will use darker tones, but you can also use a lighter, brighter tones, it's up to you. And we will use our trusty wet on wet technique. So you already know the steps, but let's repeat them. First, paint with water, and you can cover the whole surface of your paper or just and leave the margins as I will do. It's up to you. And try to be quick while the paper is still wet. Use your liquid watercolor. Usually, it's together with a pipette. So you apply the liquid watercolor with this pipette. If you don't have pipette, you can use just brush and drop the colour on the top of your wet surface. So depending on how wet the surface is, the color will spread in a different way, so it's better to have a more wet surface than too dry. And you can help yourself with a brush when you see that the colors don't land then paint with a brush on the top of it, and you can also add extra drops of color into it until you're happy until all the surface is covered. So this is easy and fun exercise, and you can see you can create really lovely, lovely textures. Here is how it looks like when it's dry. You can see it's dried, really lighter, but still it's really very lovely texture. So I will dry on the top of it in the original class, and I will paint all with a lifting technique. If you're curious, you can have a look. And let's see the same way of painting texture with different colors with more colors. This time, there will be light one and warm light colors. Again, painting with water on the top of our paper And while it's still wet, let's do the magic and drop the color on the top of it. And this time, I will try to be more generous both with water and with liquid water color. In the way that color will really flow in an easy way, in the way that if you bend your schatulebok or your paper, the drops of color will fall down. They will flow, and this is something you can do. Just use more water, more of your liquid, watercolor. And instead of using brush, you can simply move your paper, your sketchbook, and let the gravity do the whole work and see what will happen if you will just let the drops to fall down and spread in a natural way. But again, if you want, you can also use your brush to unite all the surface, all the parts of the paper, of your color, and it's up to you. You can leave it as it is, or you can use your brush and unify all the surface. So add new drops of color into the wet surface and look how hypnotizing it is to create this kind of texture. I really, really love it. I really love liquid water colors because they allow you to make those vibrant, vibrant colors. And the last part is still repeating the same steps. I will use different colors. I will use greens and blues. This one, this part is from the class where I paint underwater we seen and where I use bleach. And you can also see it in the next lesson. This is the base for the next lesson where we will add extra textures and effects with bleach. So I will just leave you with the speed up process because I use the same steps as for the previous parts. So here's how we create textured background with liquid water colors. We use wet on wet technique. We use liquid colors by applying them with drops of different colours onto the wet surface. And then we let the drops of colours blend into each other, flow into each other or we help to uniform the whole surface with a brush. So here are examples of illustrations that you can make with lifting technique on the top of the liquid watercolor background or by simply layering, painting layers of other colors on the top of your background. And in the next lesson, you will see better what does it mean, and we will see what kind of magic you can create with water and bleach. 13. Liquid Watercolor - Surprising Textures 1: And let's proceed with liquid watercolors and see how we can work on top of the background from the previous lesson and add some magical textures with water and bleach. So here I'm showing you the examples of the illustrations with the lifting technique. And again, it's all in the class about how to learn the lifting technique and paint an illustration with it. Here I will show you how you can achieve really lovely textures with this technique. Also, we will use bleach and Again, it's all in the original class that explore this medium, bleach and liquid water colors and where we paint an underwater world. So without further talking, let's start to explore these magical techniques. Use one of the backgrounds from the previous lessons. If you haven't done it yet, then that's the moment to do it in order to test our lifting technique. So all you have to do is to paint with water on the top of your liquid watercolor background. It has to be dry, so you can see that my background is already dry and to be quite generous with water, you have to paint with a big amount of water and also, you can see that I tried to lift the water immediately, and it didn't work, so be patient, try to paint with water multiple times and wait a little bit. And then you just grab the paper towel or tissue and lift the water, and you will see the lighter layer of the color because you are lifting up the colors. So it's a little bit different than using this technique with traditional watercolors, since it's ink and it works differently with traditional watercolors, probably you would be able to lift up all the color and uncover the paper almost the white surface of paper. While with this medium with liquid watercolors, it's not possible because it's work like ink. It doesn't have pigments. It has a dye inside and it dyes your paper instantly. But this is not something wrong rather than something really good and that you can use it to create different but really lovely effect. That's why I use this technique most of all, with liquid watercolors because see how lovely vibrant and electrical almost colors you can uncover with lifting techniques. So, for example, this orange, look how vibrant and electric it reveals to be. So, have fun, experiment. You can test the timing of your water. You can leave the water for a longer time and for the short amount of time and see the difference. In this way, you can play with transparency as well transparencies as well. Sorry and play around. You can paint something less defined or more defined. It's up to you. You can play with random strokes and shapes, or you can think of some more defined scene. So in this class, we were exploring this technique by painting underwater world because it's full of colors and electric colors, vibrant tones. But you can paint something else, for example. In the other class I painted all with this technique, it's up to you. You can just play around. So I will continue with this technique, and then I will show you how you can play with bleach and what you can create with this material. So now I'm switching to bleach. I have this diluted bleach. I discovered that using pure bleach is too strong, so to have a lovely effect without having really white and too strong strokes, you can dilute it with water, and I play with it with different tools. So you can proceed by painting it with brush, and I will do it later on. But I also paint really tiny strokes with bleach with this dip pen, and I create tiny, tiny parts of this plant. And while here, you can see the different effect it makes from water. The colors are different and right now I'm using the same diluted bleach to paint with a brush. So here, use low quality brush, just to be sure not to ruin it. Obviously, it won't damage your brush if you will wash it immediately after, but still be careful about the tools that you will use. And you can see already that it immediately creates really lovely lovely hues. I call it electric colors because they really seem something natural neon. It seems like effect of light or something. So I discovered that this technique works really well with liquid watercolors and inks, the same as for the lifting technique. It doesn't have the same strength and effect with traditional watercolors. Um, it's better to say that it rather doesn't work at all with traditional watercolors. I mean, the bleach. And here I'm testing different density of bleach. So right now, I will use more intense, less diluted bleach, so you can test this as well and see different kinds of effect that it will create. It also depends on the colors that you use. Obviously, it will be different on warm colors, and later on, you will see how lovely jellyfish you can make and what kind of hue it reveals when you paint on the top of cool colors. So I will speed up the process. So Valla, the final patches for this project. And look how lovely effects you can make by combining two techniques lifting colour and fletch, and you can create those lovely transitions of transparent layers. And let's jump to the second part where we will paint another underwater scene with jellyfish. And here we will combine, again, lifting technique with applying the bleach. I will paint directly with bleach, but I will also apply the drops of bleach directly into the wet surface and let the bleach spread to create really lovely effect. So here, it's all combining it's all about combining water and bleach by playing around with these two elements. So for example, here I painted with water first, the shape of jellyfish. And right now I'm applying the bleach into the water into the wet surface. I'm applying bleach with brush, and you can see what's happening. So I will do those thing. I will speed up the process. I will basically mix. This technique, also lifting technique and painting directly with bleach as I did with the first illustration. Without specifying you each and every step, you can see if you want to understand better all the steps. Also, the other class, but I'm sure you already get the point, play around, mix test. I also did numerous trials before I was happy with the result. So it's all about experimenting and testing and seeing what works best. So have fun, and I hope you will enjoy this process. H So let's see again what we covered in this lesson. So we used our backgrounds from the previous lessons to use the lifting technique to play with water and with bleach in order to create lovely textures. So we can paint you can paint strokes or shapes with clean water and lift it with a paper towel for the lifting technique and use diluted bleach painted with different tools on the top of your background. And play around with water and bleach, different quantity of both. Use both wet on wet and wet on dry technique, and just play around and see what will happen. Enjoy. 14. Liquid Watercolor - Surprising Textures 2: Let's see what other lovely and extra textures we can make with liquid watercolors. So maybe you remember, I showed you this illustration for the tree trunk and the traditional watercolors in the previous lesson, and that's how I made it. So here I will show you how I paint pebbles and kacti. That's the lesson from the original class about exploring liquid watercolors, all the basic knowledge about this medium. And exploring it. And here I'll show you how to add extra textures by painting pebbles, by painting cactus because I also painted pebbles. But we will just make cactus because the basic is the same, and you can apply it in different contexts as for the tree, as for the pebbles, as for the cacti, as for the rocks, whatever you want. Okay, without further tucking, let's get started. So here I will show you how you can paint background in a different way. I will just use a single color. I won't do textured background since I want the cacti to be textured, so it would be too much if also the background would be textured, so I want it to be just a plain color. I'm using this bright yellow because it's a nice color to be combined with the green one. You can paint whatever you want, whatever subject you want and whatever color you want. You can also do it without painting background if you want. So our old friend spray water spray, and I'm adding a little bit of dust texture for the base of my cacti, even if probably it will be covered, but, you know, layering textures is never enough, and you can always start as well by making the first texture in this way. So to paint the cactus, I will basically do the same what we did in the previous lessons, nothing new here. So some of the parts I will paint as for the background from the previous lessons by painting water first and then applying the drops of colour on the top of it. And in this way, you will create the base, which will create lovely textured, colorful textures of colors that are blending into each other. And then we will use the secret ingredient that we already used for the lesson about sky, and that is obviously salt. And that's the same rule as for the watercolors. For the traditional watercolors, you have to sprinkle the salt on the top of the wet colour and let it dry before you will remove it and let the salt to do it work while it's still wet. But the difference here, I mean, in my opinion, is that the salt is more evident. I mean, the texture that you can do with watercolors, with liquid watercolors, it's a little bit different than for the traditional colors. Probably it's again, because they are thigh based and not pigment based. So it's all more vibrant and evident. So give it a try. And also mix your techniques. Here, I'm using wet on dry. So I'm painting directly the colors of liquid watercolors, the drops of color on the dry surface. Now, the rules here are more or less the same as for the traditional watercolor. You can also drop a color into your cactus, and this is also to create cactus texture. Sometimes you can see those dots of different colors on the top of the cactus. So that's the same here. I will use it both on the color or directly on the clean water, and this is the other tool to build the texture. So again, I will speed up the process. Here, the steps are all the same playing with drops of liquid water colors. Here you can see, I drop them directly on the water, playing with salt and building this cacti texture. You can also use the pen or trusty pen that we already used for leaves and grass. And also here, you can add extra texture. I mean, here, just it's so evident that you can paint the spines and Yeah, it's always adding an extra texture to it, since it's like an ink you can use in a very easy way by dipping your pen and direct into the color and use it as an ink. So here is all the secret magic knowledge to create those extra lovely textures, mix different techniques from previous lessons, create extra texture by dropping the color directly into the wet surface. It could be water. It could be your color and add the salt also into the wet color. And again, some examples of where you can apply this texture. Again, our tree, but I also apply to the ground texture and other types of cacti with or without the background or also the pebbles. I hope you will enjoy, have fun. 15. Masking Fluid Textures - Basic Tools: And let's dive to the medium, last type of textures from this class, and it will involve masking fluid. I love to use this medium, and you can be really surprised how many different fun textures and techniques you can make in order to create textures. So I use it often not only to mask some parts of my illustration, but most of the times I use it to create those textures. Let's get started. At the beginning, I will show you the basics and how to use this medium. In a fun way, and then you will see how you can apply those tools to paint fun trees. But it's on the example, you can apply it in many different situations and contexts. Again, those lessons are already here on my class on my profile. This is class about masking fluid, where I explore this medium in a really deep way. So if you're new to this medium, maybe you would like to see first this class. Let's get started. I'm sure we will have a lot of fun. I will walk you briefly through masking fluid. But again, there's the whole class that explores it in a wider way. There are different types like this one in the bottle or the one that you can apply in the form of pen or really thin line, the other bottle. If you're new to masking fluid, then maybe you would like to explore it first and see what does it? What do you use it when you work with watercolors. But basically, as the name says, it's all about masking some areas. You paint over it, and when it's dry, you peel it off, and the area that you covered it with will remain lang. It will remain white or as you covered it. So this is the marker pen with masking fluid, and this one is this kind of applicator, which is really thin and serves to paint really thin lines. So it's also very good. I will test my masking fluids on already painted paper. There is a layer of color, but it's up to you. You can also use it directly on the paper without painting it. I will do it only because it already creates a first layer of textures. So let's test our first muskin fluid. So it's already quite old, and the muskin fluid was very liquid. I think it became like this in time, and it's more difficult to apply. But if you test, there is also a different brand, different kind. And if they're dense enough, they can really create really lovely thin lines. So I will apply it as it is, and I will do I will make the best of it. Another type masking fluid as a marker. This one is from Schminke again, it's made to apply masking fluid as a thin lines a little bit thicker than the previous one, but since the other one was to liquid, then maybe this one will have more success. And yes, you can see that it's more dense and lay around by applying different strokes and test it if you have this kind of masking fluid. And there's the most common one that you probably know the masking fluid in the bottle. So here you have to find a way how to apply it. So you can use brush, but it ruins the brush. So even if you will use a cheaper brush and something because you want to use a cheaper brush or the brush that you won't use anymore, still the bristles will remain covered with this kind of silicon glue and it won't go away. So in the end, it is very uncomfortable to apply. And I'm not a big fan of using brush. I know some people do, and they clean it. Somehow I wasn't able to save or clean any of my brushes. So what I'm using is the silicon brush. They are made to apply skin fluid, specifically, maybe also other things, but I use it to apply muskin fluid. And I also love them because they also are a great tool to make textures because as you can see, when I applying it, it won't apply in a very uniform way. It creates this lovely texture, the parts of the masking fluid that are more dense and other not. So it creates already really, really lovely effect. You will see it later when we will rub it off. And other fun tools that you can use to use muskin fluid and to create lovely textures. Here they are. The first is our trusting pen that we used already many times here in this class. So here I decided that I can use it because even if the muskin fluid will cover it and while it's dry, obviously, it will remain glued into the pan, but since it's metal, it will peel off. It will easily peel off, or you can just clean it while it's still wet. As you can see, it's not always easy because sometimes it remains clocked into the, but if it flows easily, then you can still give it a try and make some thin lines. That's the alternative, for the first two tools. And as you can see, if it works well, then it creates really lovely thin lines. So another fun way to use masking fluid is by applying it with toilet paper roll. So to do that, pour some of the masking fluid aside, use some place that it's not so precious for you. And then take your paper roll, dip into the masking fluid, and apply it. Very fun to you can play around. And actually, it's about making different circle shapes, but not only because then you can later on fold your paper and create some more oval shapes, some kind of petal shapes and half circle shapes. The possibilities are endless. So explore, have fun, try different strokes, think that you want to explore different kind of textures, and you can do it just by playing and trying. And once you're ready, once you try different tools, let your masking fluid dry. It has to be completely dry before you will paint over it. So once it's dry, take your watercolor and paint a layer of the color. In my case, it will be the second layer of color, but if you um, used masking fluid on the paper that it will be the first layer of color. Anyway, just paint the color on the top of your masking fluid and wait again until your color gets dry. As you can see, you can use also the hair dryer to speed up the process of drying and once everything is super dry, then peel off the masking fluid. You can do it with your hand, with your finger, but sometimes it's annoying and sometimes the fastest way, especially if it won't peel off easily is to using a plastic foil or allopane. So in my case, I will use a piece of packaging of tissues. So it often makes the process of peeling much more quick and easy. And here I'm zooming in the textures made by this unusual application of masking fluid, as you can see, different kinds. This is the one created by the silicon brush, personally, my favorite one. But also, you know, the toilet paper is really cool. And yeah, you can see that this kind creates really plain kind of strokes. But also, since it was very liquid, so the forms and shapes are really interesting. And you can use all these kind of characteristics to work on your texture. So in the next lesson, I will show you how you can paint beautiful and fun trees with this kind of way with this technique. Obviously, there are some other things you can do with it, but we will see how we can paint trees. So here are the tools and step to work with masking fluid textures, test different kinds of masking fluid. If you have them at home, test different ways of applying it. For example, with the tools that you already have at home like toilet paper roll, stick, pen or whatever, if you have a silicon brush, then definitely test it out and remember to work with masking fluid, always work on the dry watercolor and to peel it off both of them watercolor and masking fluid must be dry. And here is an example of a fun way that you can play around with masking fluids and watercolors and create really lovely textured patterns, for example. 16. Masking Fluid Textures - Applying Into Illustration: Although in this lesson, I will show you how to paint trees with masking fluid. You can see that you can apply masking fluid in many different ways and many different themes, not only trees, but, for example, animals, grass, et cetera. So it's up to you. I will show you different tools, and you can paint together with me those trees or the site where you can apply the tools and the techniques that I will show you. And this lesson is from the class where I explore in a deeper way what is masking fluid and where we paint found trees. Let's get started. The first step is to paint the first layer of the trees or whatever you are painting right now. I'm painting trees, so I will paint different types and shapes of trees with different colors. The layer can be quite light because we will build up new layers with watercolor on the top and with masking fluid, so it doesn't have to be very dark. So I will speed up the process of painting the first layer first layer and shapes of all my trees. Once you're ready, remember that your first layer must be dry and the second step would be applying the masking fluid on the top of your first layer. I will use different tools here. Again, for different trees, different tools, I will play around test different kind of tools to apply the masking fluid. And you can see also in the original class, step by step. But basically, here, what I will do is I will alternate the layer of skin fluid and then the layer of watercolor. And I will repeat this process. So to recap, the first layer of watercolor, the second layer of skin fluid, then the third layer, which will be, again, watercolor. When it's dry, then I will apply another layer of muskin fluid. I forgot that in the meantime, I will peel off the previous layers of skin fluid. So I will test different tools, different masking fluids, the same as for the previous lesson in order to make different textures, different leafy textures. So if you remember the previous lesson about painting leafy texture in the tree crowns, then this is a fun alternative way to do that. I'm using here both marker and then silicon brush, alternate tools. I just play around and see what will happen. The key here is to diversify, to see different to use different tools, and also to use the knowledge that we already have from the previous lessons because then you can you think how you can paint watercolors in a fun way that will help your texture to build up. For example, use granulating colors. Or use different colors that will blend within the wet on wet technique and so on. So right now, I will apply the masking fluid on the top of all the trees. This is our second layer, and I will speed up the process. Again, playing, testing different tools, experimenting. Here is the silicon, brush, for example, and so on. So the third step, the third layer is to paint the watercolor. So basically, it's the second layer of watercolor, but the third layer, meaning that there's the layer of masking fluid. Anyway, you paint on the top of what you already have your first layer and your masking fluid. And once you're ready once your watercolor is dry, then it's time to reveal the magic and peel off the muskin fluid. So I will use my trusty plastic tissue packaging because it will be easier and also it protects my finger because if you have to peel off big surface of muskin fluid and it warms up, then it can be quite painful. So that's my tip for you. Use some protective plastic film. And a, you can see what fun, really lovely fun textures are revealed. We are peeling off the muskin fluid and revealing the layer that was underneath. And you can see really, really gorgeous things you can do with with those basic tools, but you can really be creative and invent a lot of fun textures. And Walla, here is the final result. I'm super enthusiast of this technique, and I'm sure you will enjoy it too. If it's this kind of textures you are searching for, it gives me an impression of woodcut, of the techniques of printmaking, which is woodcut or linem cut, something like that. So basically, you can stop at this point and just make three layers. I mean, two layers of watercolor, but you can continue and repeat the process. So, for example, for this tree, I will paint new dots of colors. And in this way, I will create this very three dimensional effect. New colors, new textures will reveal by this. It's up to you. For example, here, I will paint, on the top of some leaves also to make um colorful textures on the top and to add some extra sparkles into my illustration. And here I'm making a trunk texture. So again, something we already did with watercolors, and you can use masking fluid to do that. It is really great tool because as you can see, it already creates this woody texture as a woodcutu printed technique does, and it's something exciting as well. So here's the final result of my experimenting and of the trees. Here are some other examples of the trees that I made with this technique and some illustrations that I did. So I tested quite a lot, often when I work with watercolors. So I think it's something you should try out too as well. Have fun, enjoy, and let's repeat briefly the process and steps from this lesson. Okay, so to paint your illustration with masking fluid, paint the first layer of watercolor first, then apply the masking fluid, experiment with different ways of how you can apply it in order to create those lovely textures, paint the second layer of watercolor on the top of the masking fluid. Then when it's dry, peel off the masking fluid and you can repeat this process steps as many times as you want remember, have fun, experiment and explore those textures. 17. Final Thoughts: Alright, so we've made it. If you saw the whole class, then I congratulate you. I'm really proud of you, and I'm aware it was really big to digest. So what I suggest to you is that you can turn back to the content of this class step by step, piece by piece. Just take one piece at a time and see what inspires you most and work on it. And when you're ready, then you can come back to it later and work on something different and you can create your project with just one texture, for example, and come back to it later and update your project with new pieces of art of textures or whatever you created. So I cannot wait to see what you created. Please share it with us. I will be super happy to see and to hear from you. Was it useful for you? How it helped your art to develop was it helpful? Was it inspiring? Also, if you will apply those textures into your illustrations. I encourage you to comment also on the projects of other colleagues, of other students. It is really important to see each other's art, to see what you created, to see what other are creating, to comment it. And to appreciate it. I hope you really enjoy this adventure and that you learned a lot. Follow me here on my Skillshare, I will continue to create new content, also on the new textures. If you have any questions about other types of textures you would like to learn then come back to me in the discussion panel, and I will be happy to hear some suggestions from you. Also, you can follow me on my YouTube where I post some different content, where I post many different things that I don't share here on Skillshare. I will be happy to have you in my community. Also on Instagram. Let's connect together. Let's create, and thank you for being here with me. Bye.